Brugge and Mercedes World We had a Eurotunnel ticket to use up so we thought we’d pop over to Brugge for the weekend as we hadn’t been there for a while. And we managed to sneak in a drive in a Mercedes E63 AMG at Mercedes World on the way home.
Eurotunnel Friday evening - A dash home from work to pack the car and head for the Eurotunnel. My little Honda hasn’t been on here for ages.We arrived in Brugge at around 23:30 (mainly due to the hour lost as we crossed the Channel). Despite being very tired, we still managed to struggle down to the hotel’s bar for a quick beer before bedtime.
Walplein I’m not sure that we’ve ever been in Brugge in the height of summer before. We tend to visit more out of season when it’s a bit less busy (and the weather is not so nice), so we’re not used to seeing the street bars and restaurants quite so busy.
Beer Wall This is (part of) the beer wall in 2be. Allegedly every beer produced in Belgium is represented in this wall, along with the glass it’s served in (most of them have dedicated glasses). There are 1,130 of them.
2be The 2be bar. It’s so empty because it’s about 11am. They “only” have six beers on tap at any one time and there are beer menus on bungee cords hanging from the ceiling. Super idea, unless you’re really short like Judith and can’t reach them.
Cormorant Judith bought be a new compact camera for my birthday and I’m giving it its first proper run out today. I photographed this Cormorant at full 20x zoom from a distance of a couple of hundred feet. I don’t think my SLR would have been able to take a better picture under these conditions.
Canal Having walked around Brugge for an hour, we decided to walk down the canal to Damme.
Canal Judith on the footpath/cycle path to Damme. There are some really nice houses along here. I didn’t take any photos of them though because, well, they’re people’s houses and it probably gets on their nerves when people do that sort of thing.
Trees These trees line one side of the canal. Judging by the size of them, I assume that they were planted around the time that the canal was made.
Boat For those too lazy to walk, this boat travels from Brugge to Damme every couple of hours. It looks nice enough, but it would be a shame to miss out on the lovely walk.
Damme Having arrived safely in Damme, we stopped for a beer and a bite to eat. I say “a bite”, but I ordered lasagne and it was massive.Interestingly, this is the same beer as we were drinking in Meribel a few weeks ago.
Church of Our Lady After lunch we went for a walk to the Church of Our Lady.
Damme View I paid my Euro to the man and walked up the incredibly narrow staircase to the top of the church’s 45m tall tower. It’s just as well there was hardly anyone about as passing is only possible if one party retreats to one of the couple of passing places on the stairway.
Damme Miniature View A photo of Damme from the tower using my new camera’s “miniature” setting.
Tower This is what the tower looks like from the canal. Although you can’t really appreciate its height fully as two thirds of it is obscured by the trees.
Canal View Looking back down the canal towards Brugge from Damme.
Brugge We got back to Brugge at around 6pm. All of the bars and restaurants around the middle of town were completely rammed, so we decided to head back to our hotel to have a couple of drinks in the bar while it hopefully thinned out a bit.
Bier Bistro On the way back to the hotel, down a back street only a couple of hundred yards from the main square, we passed a sign in the street pointing down some steps to a basement bar/restaurant called the Bier Bistro. As you can see, unlike everywhere else round about, this place was pretty quiet, which was odd because it’s fabulous. They’ve got a beer menu with over 100 beers on it and serve very nice beer-based food.
Bier Bistro Our first round in the Bier Bistro.
Straffe Hendrik The ferociously strong Straffe Hendrik Tripel. At 9% ABV, this is definitely one to be sipped and savoured.
Kasteel Rouge At 8% ABV, Judith’s Kasteel Rouge is also not a beer to be drunk willy-nilly.
Rainbow A while later we venture back outside to discover that a) it’s been raining heavily while we’ve been entertaining ourselves in the basement of the Bier Bistro, and b) there’s a fabulous double rainbow in the sky. You can just make out the second rainbow in this photo.
Church of Our Lady The evening sun is casting a lovely orange glow on the tower of the Church of Our Lady. This is the one in Brugge, as opposed to the one that I walked up earlier in Damme.
Church of Our Lady Another view of the tower of the Church of Our Lady.
Market Sunday - There’s a large market on in the square t’ Zand. However, it’s full of the sort of stuff that would just clutter up my house, so there’s no need to buy anything.
Breakfast Having had a walk around the market, we pop back into 2be for some breakfast. I’ve had quite a lot of Kriek Boon over the years (it’s my favourite fruity beer), but this is the first time I’ve ever had a draft one. And very nice it was too.
Church of Our Lady - Again Back out in town and there’s another nice view of the Church of Our Lady.
Lunchtime We decide to pop into the Henri Maes Brouwerij de Halve Maan for some lunch.
Dubbel Obviously you can’t have lunch without something to wash it down with. In this case a lovely Zot Dubbel.
Flemish Stew The Flemish Stew, also cooked with Zot Dubbel, was very nice indeed.
@ThePub We continued our tour of interesting new Brugge bars (at least they’re new to us) with a visit to @ThePub. It’s right at the end of an alley, so there’s very limited opportunity to people watch from the tables outside, but they did have an excellent selection of beers on their menu.
The Belfry Back in the main square, there’s a nice view of the most imposing building in Brugge - the Belfry.
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Cambriuinus We’ve been to Cambriuinus before, but their stunning beer menu (that Judith’s flicking through here) is always worth another look. This is one of the busiest bars/restaurants in town though, so unless you’re visiting Brugge in the very off-peak season, it’s probably worth booking a table.
Cambriuinus Blond The bar’s own brew. Nice.
Bier Bistro As we had such a nice time in the Bier Bistro yesterday, we thought we’d pop in again on our way back to the hotel. It’s always interesting having a Kwak, if only for the reaction it gets from the other tourists in the bar, who almost inevitably also order one in their next round.
Thoughtful Judith wondering what she might have after her Leffe Ruby.
La Chouffe This was nice. I also had a fabulous “young cheese” baguette that was made with this beer (this is the Bier Bistro after all).I’m not sure what the deal is with the picture of the gnome on the glass with his bum out. I might have to Google that.
F1 Car Exploded Monday - It’s going home day today. We left Brugge and drove up to Zeebrugge with the intention of driving along the coast. But a) the weather was awful, and b) I was running low on petrol and didn’t seem to be able to find any petrol stations on the coast road. So we ducked back onto the motorway, filled up (EUR1.78-a-litre!) and headed for Calais.Back in the UK, we stopped off at Mercedes-Benz World, which is where I took this photo of an exploded Formula 1 car. Being the school holidays, it was pretty busy, but we arrived late in the afternoon so it wasn’t too bad. They had a few AMG Experience sessions left, so I booked one.
300SL With a few minutes to spare before my session started, we had a quick look around. This wonderful 300SL is on display in the lobby/reception.
AMGs Outside a row of AMGs waited for their turn on the tracks. Which one would be mine?
E63 AMG This one as it turned out. With 525bhp, I reckon this is probably the most powerful car I’ve ever driven.
E63 AMG And here I am out on the wet, low grip track.
E63 AMG A bit of opposite lock there to keep us sliding. The slide didn’t last for long though :o( Of the five tracks they’ve got at MB World, the low-grip circle is by far the most entertaining and challenging. On the other tracks you just go as fast as you can/dare. On this one you need to have actual skill to keep the car sliding. I reckon my best controlled slide so far has only been about 30 yards.
Brookland's Hotel We finished up at MB World just as the rush hour was getting going on the M25/M3, so we decided to pop next door for a bit of dinner in the Brookland’s Hotel before we headed home. We ate in the bar because we were a bit early for the restaurant and I’m happy to report that it was very nice indeed.A couple of hours later we were home. And so ended another top trip to Brugge. We’ve had some super food, some super beers and even managed to have a blast in a super-saloon on the way home. Awesome.